


the sea in storm

by peggycarterisacat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (spoiler alert: it's aerys), Aegon Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Elia lives, Gen, POV Outsider, Rhaenys lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 08:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peggycarterisacat/pseuds/peggycarterisacat
Summary: Elia Martell sits the Iron Throne tall and proud when the first of the rebels arrive, wearing the black of a widow, the black of a Targaryen. Jaime's the only one close enough to see the way her hands, placidly folded, tremble in her lap."Lord Stark," she says. Her voice was once sweet — gentle and soft. Today it carries an edge that's heard throughout the cavernous throne room. One that's not out of place amongst the skulls of dragons. "Have you come to swear fealty to your King?"Written forElia Martell creative weekon tumblr, for the prompt:Aerys was killed by Elia, not Jaime.





	the sea in storm

**Author's Note:**

> This is a few days late, sorry!
> 
> For reference, [this is what GRRM envisioned the iron throne looking like](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/File:Marc_Simonetti_Bran_theironthroneJoff.jpg) (link is to the asoiaf wiki). 
> 
> title from a quote by Patrick Rothfuss
> 
> “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

"What will you do, Ser Jaime? Will you serve your rightful King?" she asked, blood pooling at her feet.

* * *

 

Elia Martell sits the Iron Throne tall and proud when the first of the rebels arrive, wearing the black of a widow, the black of a Targaryen. Jaime's the only one close enough to see the way her hands, placidly folded, tremble in her lap.

The throne room balances on a fragile facade of normalcy, absurd amongst the carnage of the city. Jaime's own father, who led the charge through the foolishly opened gates, leaving slaughter in his wake. Jaime himself, who cleared three bodies away from the throne and raised dais, who hastily cleaned up the blood, who disposed of anyone who knew they hadn't simply happened upon the grisly scene.

Enough blood and battle fills the city streets that their excuses may yet stand.

"Princess Elia—" Ned Stark begins to say.

"Queen Regent," Jaime corrects, hoarse.

Jaime watches him take in the scene, watches him process and come to a decision, a judgement. Watches him take a knee before the throne. He doesn't call her Queen, not yet, but he shows more respect than expected from a rebel — more than would be offered by any of the others, brash Robert Baratheon, vengeful Jon Arryn, ambitious Hoster Tully.

"Lord Stark," she says. Her voice was once sweet — gentle and soft. Today it carries an edge that's heard throughout the cavernous throne room. One that's not out of place amongst the skulls of dragons. "Have you come to swear fealty to your King?"

"I do not see Aerys," he says, cautiously. It's not an answer, but she does not press, for now.

Nor does she answer the unspoken question. "I remember my history lessons — do you, my Lord?  _ A king should never sit easy. _ It was Aegon the Conqueror who said that, and because of it he forged this throne." She sits straight-backed before the steel fangs studding the throne, the same ones that so often cut the Mad King. "Some say it is the throne itself that decides who is fit to rule — that it was the throne that killed Maegor the Cruel, the throne that cuts those unworthy to sit upon it."

Stark's face does something, something Jaime can't read. Some also say that Maegor's death was suicide, or else murder. Nothing ever conclusively proven, but there are undertones. Implications.

"Do you think Aerys was worthy?" she asks.

It's a question with an obvious answer, but she's not asking because it is unknown. Stark's face does something else then, his eyes hard but his mouth moving. He doesn't want to give voice to his answer, but he knows he must speak.

"No," he says shortly. "He was not."

"What was done to your father and brother was unjust. I witnessed it and could do nothing to stop it." Her voice cracks on those words, and Jaime remembers the smell of smoke, of burning flesh. Bile rising in his throat. "Aerys wronged many — I cannot begin to name them all — and he is dead. Rhaegar wronged many, among them your family. My children. Myself." She had given no public reaction to her husband's betrayal, except to calm the wrath of all who loved her. Her brothers, Lady Ashara, the Dornish lords. "He, too, is dead." Something in her voice softens marginally, and Jaime wishes he could see her face. "Too much blood has been shed. Can we not find peace and heal this realm together, in the wake of their sins?"

"Perhaps we may," he says, finally. "Your Grace."

* * *

 

"Burn them all," the King commanded.

The Princess's eyes, when Jaime met them, were filled with fear. That, as much as the thought of a million lives going up in emerald flame, spurred him forward. He  _ must _ stop it, failure not an option. His sword plunged through the pyromancer's back — the sound, the resistance of flesh and bone against his strike, the spray of blood as the man died. Satsfying? Sickening?

He could not spare a moment for thought. The King would only call for a different lackey to carry out the order, and he  _ could not _ be allowed—

But by the time Jaime turned to charge up the stairs to the top of the dais, to the King waiting for death's deliverance, he saw that he was not alone in that thought.

Princess Elia, always measured and composed, able to withstand insult without so much as a twitch in her eye, stood there grasping the King's skeletal wrist in her hands, scarcely an inch away from the exposed spikes of the throne. Jaime always thought she had an uncommon strength — the quiet strength of a courtly woman, a princess raised from birth. The kind that endured, not the kind that acted.

In an instant, that particular illusion was shattered forever.

She was not only a princess, but a Martell. Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken. As Jaime gazed up the steps, he wondered that everyone had forgotten for so long. A princess raised second in line to Dorne's throne, born to the most powerful woman on the continent. 

Her soft, kind eyes blazed with all the fury of the sun.

"Where is it?" she demanded, each word punctuated and sharp. "Where is it hidden?"

But the King only laughed his croaking laugh. "Ser Jaime, remove her."

Had he not noticed the man dead at Jaime's feet? Elia's sharp eyes — no one ever said how much they resembled her brother's, the Viper's — sought Jaime's across the room. He couldn't move even if he wanted to, rooted to the floor by her gaze.

"Where is it?" she asked again.

For half a moment, fear broke through the King's madness, seeing that Jaime had not moved. That he would not move. But then his clarity passed and he sneered again. "Both of you traitors will burn with the rest of them."

Perhaps the King sensed the inevitability of what would happen next — he called for another pyromancer rather than for the guards stationed outside the throne room's doors. The Princess slammed his wrist down upon the throne's exposed blades and dragged his arm across the steel, his bright blood flowing over her fingers. It did not stop him chanting for fire and blood — the next pyromancer hurried in from the antechamber and Jaime's sword ended another life for the sake of a million more. As he turned back again, he watched a spike burst through the King's throat, spattering Princess Elia with an arc of blood.

She did not take her hands from his shoulders until the last spurts from his beating heart died with him. With trembling blood-coated fingers, she stepped back, staring at them unseeing, her eyes wide with shock. When Jaime's armor clanked with his halting step forward, she finally looked up, took a sharp breath.

"What will you do, Ser Jaime?" Her voice wavered in a way Jaime had never heard before, but within moments she straightened it into something firm. A princess, twice over. A Queen. "Will you serve your rightful King? Or am I to be damned for doing what no knight in these kingdoms could?"

He spared no thought before kneeling, holding his still-bloodied sword out to her. "To Aegon, sixth of his name," he intoned as she took measured steps down to stand before him, cleaning her hands on her black skirts, where the stains wouldn't show.

"No one must know what has happened here."

"No one will know," Jaime promised.

She was no knight or warrior, but she had done what none of them had the courage or strength to do. She carried no sword, but touched him on each shoulder as Ser Arthur Dayne had done years before.

"Rise."

Weariness was written into her face, suddenly heavier than her years should allow. There was still blood — Jaime unhooked his cloak to offer her, to clear it away.

"No," she said, retrieving a handkerchief with fingers suddenly made clumsy. "I mustn't stain your cloak — we have appearances to keep up, after all."

Jaime caught her trembling hand. "Let me, Your Grace."

She shut her eyes and allowed him to wipe away the drops of blood clinging to her face, to her throat. There was no way she trusted him, not truly. For all his private protests, he was still another white sword who stood by before the cruelty of the King and court. Abuse hurled at her from all corners, her courtesies and gentle smiles belying the hurt beneath. Too many wounds left unacknowledged, to fester. Their mothers might have been friends once, but both were long dead.

Yet they were the only ones here, the only ones who knew the truth, and a certain kind of camaraderie could be forged through treason.

Her next breath shook in her throat, but the one she drew as she opened her eyes was calm and steady. "Send reinforcements to the guards on my children," she instructed. "They will be even more of a target now."

As Jaime moved to obey, her blank eyes cast about the room and a moment later she spoke again. "We must destroy the wildfire. No one can know."

Jaime had already been planning on that. "I'll take care of them."

She nodded and stepped back up the stairs to the dais, perching herself carefully upon the throne. "For now — stay here, by my side." Perhaps she did trust him, at least a little. "I expect I'll need your support often in the coming days."

"Of course, Your Grace." Jaime took his position at the foot of the throne, between his Queen and anything that might come towards her.

Perhaps this is the first thing he's done right in years.

* * *

 

She dons a clean gown before she returns to her children that night and Jaime follows, hand on the hilt of his sword should anyone attempt to harm her.

Flickering candlelight illuminates the nursery, glinting on Aegon's fair hair and on the tears threatening to spill from the Queen's eyes. With one gentle fingertip she touches Aegon's tiny hand, and lets out a deep, shuddering breath when he grasps it without waking.

"Oh, my love," she whispers into the still air, wiping away the tear trailing down her cheek.

Jaime has never seen her cry before, and looks away. Not when the news arrived of defeat upon the Trident and her husband's death. Not when Aerys refused to let her leave to the relative safety of Dragonstone with her children. Not as the rebel armies approached and Jaime's father offered false promises of peace.

Across the room, Rhaenys sleeps with her fluffy kitten curled up against her knees. The cat's bright eyes open as the Queen crosses the room on soft feet, but the little princess doesn't stir until she sits on the edge of the bed.

"Mama?" she mumbles sleepily as he mother strokes her hair. "Miss you."

"I'm here, my love."

But when Rhaenys looks up and blinks blearily, she makes a distressed squeal at the sight of her mother's tears.

"I'm happy," she whispers hurriedly, pulling her feet up into Rhaenys's small bed. The cat hops down with a glare. "So happy to see you, so happy we're safe."

They're not, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it's better than Aerys's madness and open war. Perhaps there might be peace — young Aegon will be a better king than his grandfather. A better man than his father.

"I'll stay here tonight, Ser Jaime," she says, the little princess dozing off in her arms again.

He nods, exits, and takes up his station outside.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3 
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](https://peggycarterisacat.tumblr.com/)


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